alse in nature and in act, that all you have said to me
is not true, that you have degraded me--Oh," she fiercely added,
breaking off and speaking with infinite anger and scorn--"it was only
love, honest and true, however mistaken, which could make what has been
between us endurable in my eyes! What I have thought was true love, and
its true passion, helped me to forget the degradation and the secret
shame--only the absolute honesty of that love could make me forget. But
suppose I find it only imitation; suppose I see that it is only
selfishness, only horrible, ugly self-indulgence; suppose you are a man
who plays with a human soul! If I find that to be so, I tell you I
shall hate you; and I shall hate myself; but I shall hate you more--a
thousand times more."

She paused with agony and appealing, with confusion and vague horror in
her face. Her look was direct and absorbing, her eyes like wells of
sullen fire.

"Al'mah," he replied with fluttered eagerness, "let us talk of this
later--not now--later. I will answer anything--everything. I can and I
will prove to you that this is only a mad idea of yours, that--"

"No, no, no, not mad," she interrupted. "There is no madness in it. I
had a premonition before I came. It was like a cloud on my soul. It
left me when we met here, when I heard your voice again; and for a
moment I was happy. That was why I sang before dinner that song of
Lassen's, 'Thine Eyes So Blue and Tender.' But it has come back.
Something deep within me says, 'He is not true.' Something whispers,
'He is false by nature; it is not in him to be true to anything or
anybody.'"

He made an effort to carry off the situation lightly. With a great
sense of humour, she had also an infinite capacity for taking things
seriously--with an almost sensational gravity. Yet she had always
responded to his cheerful raillery when he had declined to be tragical.
He essayed the old way now.

"This is just absurd, old girl;"--she shrank--"you really are mad. Your
home is Colney Hatch or thereabouts. Why, I'm just what I always was to
you--your constant slave, your everlasting lover, and your friend. I'll
talk it all over with you later. It's impossible now. They're ready for
you in the ball-room. The accompanist is waiting. Do, do, do be
reasonable. I will see you--afterwards--late."

A determined poignant look came into her eyes. She drew still farther
away from him. "You will not, you shall not, see me 'afterwards--la